Can I throw in something not exclusive to ballad singing, but noticable because of the length of some ballads?
Don't know what other people call it be we used to refer to it as four-square singing.
It is when a singer breaks up words of songs by hitting each syllable with a note of equal length; (sorry if that's convoluted) it it probably on of the most common barriers to listening to singing for me nowadays.
It makes Liverpool come out as Li-ver-pool and London as Lon-don.
It just came into my mind as I was watching (and have just walked out of) a televised concert of exile songs where the singer sang E-rin's Love-ly Home - just like that!!!
We recorded field-singer after field-singer who told us, when we asked, that they tried (as they put it) to sing as near as they spoke, in other words, in speech patterns; as far as I'm concerned, essential to communicating narrative. They also told us that when the sense of a sentence carries on over more than one line they would not put in a gap, or if a long line made one necessary, they would take a snatch-breath in order to maintain the sense of the narrative.
This type of problem can arise when the singer allows the voice to follow the accompaniment, (particularly rythmical) rather than to lead it.
Jim Carroll